


Happy Halloween, Granger.

by LadyKenz347



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Halloween, Mystery, Scary, Strictly Dramione's Halloween Fest, dramione - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 23:28:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16397138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKenz347/pseuds/LadyKenz347
Summary: The sights and sounds of the Forbidden Forest on Halloween Night aren't all what they seem.





	Happy Halloween, Granger.

“Did you hear something?” 

 

Hermione stilled under his knowing touch, the hairs on her arms and neck rising quickly. Maybe it was just his expert hands moving over her that caused the reaction… but something felt suddenly off. 

 

The air shifted and stilled. 

 

“No,” he mumbled against the skin along her jaw, exploring a path down her neck, his hands pushing up her jumper and kneading at her covered breast. 

 

Her wide eyes rolled back into her head momentarily as he found that spot on the tendon that stretched down to her shoulder and her hands wound themselves up in his hair, tugging it firmly. 

 

“I don’t see why we had to come all the way out here… we could have just found a room like every other time,” she complained. 

 

He paused his lips and pulled back, staring at her with flat gray, unamused eyes. His hands braced on the massive tree behind her as he caged her with his arms. 

 

“Are you scared Granger?”

 

“What! No… I just don’t see a reason to traipse all the way out here in the dead of night for a snog…”

 

He gave a breathy sigh and glared at her.

 

“You know very well that Halloween parties are raging in each and every house common room tonight…”

 

Hermione returned his glare with one of her own.

 

“Yes, well that hasn’t stopped you from dragging me into every broom closet and unused classroom from the Slytherin Dungeons to Gryffindor Tower these last two months.”

 

“You’re being dramatic.”

 

Draco smirked and returned his mouth to her neck, and momentarily she forgot why she was so annoyed with him. 

 

She noticed that for only a moment there was a hesitation before he claimed her mouth. His breath turned sharp and haggard. 

 

They hadn’t ventured too far into the Forbidden Forest but it was enough that the edge of the treeline was barely visible over his shoulder. 

 

The moon was a mere crescent tonight, barely visible through the cloud cover, and she felt an unfamiliar chill settle over her. 

 

“Maybe we should head back…” she said quickly, panic settling into her belly. 

 

“What?! No!” She furrowed her brow at his tone and he laughed nervously, “We’ve been here for 2 minutes! You can’t spend 30 minutes away from your friends to see your--” he paused, gulped. 

 

“My what?” she arched a brow, feeling like he had almost made a grave slip and referred to himself as her boyfriend. 

 

True, they hadn’t really talked much about what it was they were doing lately… she wasn’t even sure she knew how it had all started. But here they were, eight weeks later… snogging. 

 

It hadn’t progressed much further, some exploratory hands and a shirt off here or there – hers, never his – but Hermione hadn’t been all too sure about Draco’s intention of taking up this secret affair with her. 

 

Not that affair was the right word… they barely talked. Barely did anything except kiss each other breathlessly a few times a week. Sometimes they’d argue and then snog… or he’d find her studying, so he’d flip a book open and read alongside her… and then they’d snog. But mostly it was just a bunch of this. 

 

Earlier he had slipped her a note in Potions, telling her to meet him out here. He said the common rooms would be too busy to slip past and there would be drunken students in every nook, corner and abandoned stairwell in Hogwarts tonight… 

  
She had thought seriously about not coming. She probably shouldn’t have… finding an excuse to leave the Gryffindor Halloween party was near impossible but she had found one. She had snuck down here in the cover of the crescent moon and waited. 

 

She wasn’t sure why she was so incredibly enamoured by Draco Malfoy. Bully and intolerant jerk extraordinaire. But, she was. He was like her drug, intoxicating and dangerous. A secret she shared with no one, not a single soul. 

 

Something that after the last five years, was all hers. 

 

It was stupid and childlish but damnit, it felt  _ good.  _

 

There was a crack of what sounded like magic and Hermione stilled again; this time Draco had too. 

 

“Scared, Granger?” he whispered, dangerously. But there was something oddly unnerving about him tonight, he was nervous and twitchy. He was setting her on edge. 

 

“What is that?” she whipped her head side to side and reached for her wand but there his lips were again. 

 

She thought she could hear him give a deep gulp. 

 

“It’s nothing, probably a Unicorn,” he murmured. 

 

_ Crunch. _

 

“Draco,” she hissed, batting at him, “something is out there.”

 

“It’s the Forbidden Forest, Granger. There is any number of things out there. It’s probably a Centaur or something…” 

 

His assurance was barely that, as he peered around his shoulder, tense. 

 

“I am not kidding around, we have to go back… this was a bad idea.”

 

She tried to push past him but his hand snapped out and grabbed her elbow. 

 

“Let’s stay a bit longer,” his eyes darted back and forth. 

 

“Are you mad?  _ Let’s go!”  _

 

She stopped in her tracks as a thick fog began to roll in near the treeline. It seemed to push against the strength of the wind, thick and with a deep hazy purple hue. 

 

“Draco,” she whimpered, feeling all at once nothing like a lion and more like a mouse. Her breath caught in her throat as a shadow moved along the border of the forest.

 

Her terrified eyes looked to him and his face was stone, cold and familiar. But familiar from another time… not the Draco she had been kissing for two months. 

 

“Draco?” she asked quietly.

 

And something in his mask cracked; his eyes grew stormy with conflict and panic twinged his eyes. His lip caught between his perfect snowy teeth and he seemed to make a snap decision.

 

“Run, Granger,” he said darkly and she didn’t question it. Not when he was looking at her like that. 

 

She tore away from the tree he had pinned her against and ran deeper into the woods, away from the shadow moving near the edge of the forest, gripping her wand so hard she feared it might snap. 

 

All she could hear was the crunch of the leaves under her trainers and him following her closely. Branches whipped at her cheeks and caught in her curls. She yelped as a sharpness sliced through her cheekbone and she could feel the warmth of her own blood drip down her cheek. 

 

She couldn’t remember the last time she sprinted like this, dodging trees and roots while the wind whistled in her ears. It was too dark; darkness like she had never seen before. Everything was just barely an outline and it caused her perception to be slightly off. 

 

She didn’t dare look behind her but as she retreated farther into the forest, the noises of nature began to overwhelm her. She couldn’t tell which sounds were real as her feet carried her deeper into the brush. It was deafening quiet but it still felt far too loud. 

 

Another roll of thick, purple fog descended in front of her and she stuttered to a stop, another flicker of a shadow, this one decidedly more human. She looked left and right, panting as she tried to decide which way she ought to turn next. 

 

“Granger, this way!” 

 

Malfoy seized her hand and squeezed it tightly, leading her to the left and down towards the river that ran through the forest. The earth started sloping at a dangerous angle and she lost her footing as Draco’s hand slipped out of hers. 

 

She tumbled down some fifteen feet of earth, a large tree finally halting her descent as she smashed against it with her back, her breath leaving her violently. 

 

She gasped for air, willing her body to work properly and bring oxygen back into her lungs but nothing happened. Her eyes wide and her diaphragm constricting, fighting… nothing. Her vision black except for the brilliant flashes of white light she assumed were from the lack of air. 

 

The pain was endless and terrifying… she imagined the terror she had felt at being stuck at the bottom of the Black Lake. While she hadn’t been aware during that time, from the short time that she had found out about it until she had gone under Dumbledore’s spell… she had imagined it would be something like this.

 

Pain and panic and just...waiting. Waiting for something to begin working again. 

 

And then... everything. Her lungs filled and she rolled onto her hands and knees, greedily sucking in air as her throat rasped. Her hands searched the ground for the wand she had dropped in her fall.

 

“Damnit, Granger…” Draco sighed and gracefully slid down the hill that she had just created a path down. “Who knows what the fuck just heard you making all that ruckus,” he scolded her quietly, helping her to her feet, his eyes searching the forest. 

 

“We shouldn’t have come this far in,” she shook her head in disbelief, her breathing still haggard. “We need to turn back; can you see the stars? They’ll point us--” she searched the skies but the cover from the massive trees was too thick. “Well we just need to get to a clearing. I’ve been to this river before… I think that it runs north of Hagrid’s… so if we follow it--”

 

“Shut the fuck up, Granger,” Draco said in a low, menacing voice. 

 

“Excuse me?!” she reared on him, ready to smack him. 

 

“There,” he nodded with his chin and there it was again, the fog, now encroaching on three sides.

 

She took a step back into him and his hands found her upper arms, squeezing her slightly. 

 

“It’s not natural… that fog appears in any given direction, never rolling the same way…”

 

A growl sounded, low and terrifying ahead, near the fog and she stumbled as she tried to back away. 

 

“It’s not natural, Granger… it’s meant to push us further in. Someone is casting it.”

 

“We’ve got to get out of here, Malfoy,” a second growl joined the first and Hermione felt a cold sweat break out all over her skin. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into coming out here just to feel me up and now there’s a fucking… werewolf or something out here,” she spat at him, her voice barely heard. 

 

“It’s not a werewolf, you twit. Werewolves need a full moon.”

 

“Right, because that’s what I bloody well care about right now,” she narrowed her eyes and started retreating backwards, “can you call for my wand?”

 

“You dropped it?” 

 

“Well, I was falling to my death while you watched. So yes, I suppose my wand slipped from my fingers in that moment. Can you just  _ Accio _ it please?” 

 

Their voices were low as they exchanged unpleasantries.

 

Draco grumbled and cast the spell in a low voice. 

 

Nothing moved. 

 

“I can’t, not without putting a little more into the verbal part of the spell.”

 

“So? Do it!” 

 

“Did you not hear them--” He raked his hands through his hair, “Do you need it now? We could come back…” 

 

“Just do it, Malfoy. I need my wand or when those animals show up you’ll be fighting them solo.”

 

“Yeah, that’s doubtful,” he sneered but cast the spell more loudly and confidently, her wand flying into his open palm. 

 

She snatched it back but his hands closed around it for a moment. She gave a hard tug and he relinquished it. 

 

“Okay, now to find the way out.”

 

_ CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!  _

 

“Oh my god, Draco… did you hear that?”

 

“Go, Hermione. Now,” he turned to her with wild, frantic eyes, “this is your last chance to run, do you hear me?”

 

“What?” her brows furrowed. 

 

“RUN,” his eyes were almost black now against his pale skin. “Don’t let me find you out here. They are here for you… I’m so sorry,” he muttered nervously. “Run,” he repeated once more and she didn’t wait for another chance. She took off, hearing the sounds of two more magical cracks in the air around her. 

 

She couldn’t wrap her head around it, but she didn’t have the time or mental capacity to understand why he had said what he had, or why he wasn’t following her. 

 

She could feel the forest come alive, magic pulsing in the wind, but it was a decidedly different type of magic. 

 

Dark. 

 

The kind that made you feel nauseous by just being in the mere presence of it. Like standing next to someone who chain smokes, the way the fumes seemed to billow off of them –  that was the feeling in the Forbidden Forest tonight. 

 

She could hear voices not far from her and she planted her back against a nearby tree, sliding down it until her knees were against her chest and her heartbeat was roaring in her ears. She felt like she’d been placed in a washing machine, the constant whirring noise drowning everything else. 

 

She looked down at her hands and noticed they were shaking.

 

She thought about how funny it was that she was expected to always be brave, like her house at Hogwarts was the only definition of her character. Neville wasn’t always brave… Ron wasn’t  _ always _ brave.

 

Like them, Hermione wasn’t either. She had moments of extreme bravery, moments of confidence, grit and heroism… but then there were times like this. Times when her heart existed only in her throat and her hands shook with the weight of expected failure. 

 

The crunching of leaves and voices grew closer… _ too close _ . 

 

“Are we even sure the kid got her out here?” a deep voice rumbled and vibrated through the darkness. 

 

Her heart wrenched. 

 

“She’s out here,” Malfoy drawled in boredom, “she fell down the hill and got spooked; she kept running before I could get to her.”

 

“Hah, some boyfriend if she would leave you to be eaten by the big bad monsters in this forest,” a new voice, more scratchy and annoying. 

 

“Draco,” Hermione’s blood chilled at a female voice, hard and slimy… like a stone underwater that had grown algae. She recognized the manic edge to it: Bellatrix Lestrange, “How did you get her out here anyway?” 

 

“Does it matter? She’s here, we just have to bloody find her.”

 

“Excuse me?” her voice coiled around each word, “I don’t care if we are related or not, don’t ever speak to me like that again! Your inability to get the girl back to the Manor paints our entire family poorly. You should be thankful that we are here to assist you at all.”

 

“Yeah, Whelp. Know your place,” the deeper voice boomed in laughter. 

 

“YOU DARE SPEAK TO MY NEPHEW LIKE THAT?!” Bellatrix’s psychotic voice twisted into the air and a jet of magic that Hermione couldn’t see ripped through the air. A man’s tortured screams gurgled into the silence and Hermione, without thinking, used the distraction to take off again. 

 

She kept low to the ground, as much as she could. The forest like a vacuum all of a sudden, all noise sucked into nothingness. Her adrenaline drove each action, each movement… she wasn’t sure how she was functioning but she pushed further, faster. 

 

Until she started hearing the familiar  _ CRACK  _ of magic. 

 

Hermione had misstepped. They had seen her. There were swirls of magic in the woods around her, and she spotted a giant overturned tree, covered in overgrowth and she dove for the soft earth underneath it. She felt hidden, at least to some extent.

Her hand clamped over her own mouth, trying to quell even the sound of her breathing. If she had any normal instincts in her at all, she’d cry. But she felt nothing, nothing except adrenaline in her veins. 

 

“I can smell her… she’s near…” A feral snarl from one man and a sigh from another. A sigh she had heard many times… Draco’s. 

 

His expensive shoes and trousers came into view and her wide, terrified eyes looked up at him, her wand hand raising slightly, still trying to conceal her position. She hoped she wouldn’t have to cast and give away her position.

 

Draco’s jaw clenched, his eyes still fixed in front of him before he turned slowly, sensing her. 

 

He closed his eyes and heaved a breath. 

 

“ _ Expelliarmus _ ,” he cast quickly, his wand hand flourishing and then catching it’s prize. 

 

“You fucking bastard,” she cursed and he knelt down to grab at her arm. She didn’t go easily, she kicked nastily at him and even attempted a headbutt, but he overpowered her. 

 

Dragging her from her location, he growled at her, too low to hear, “I fucking told you not to let me catch you, stupid little witch.”

 

His jaw was stone as he dragged her through the underbrush towards his aunt. 

 

She turned then and the psychosis of the deranged woman was evident on her face, her eyes dilated and manic. 

 

“Drakie…” she purred, her eyes settling on Hermione who was still thrashing like a fish taken from the water, “you’ve made me proud. The Dark Lord will be pleased with Potter’s Mudblood. He wants to make an example of her.” 

 

“You. Fucking. Prick,” Hermione wrestled in his grasp, attempting to break free or injure him. 

 

He grabbed a fistful of her curls and wrenched her head back so her face was towards him and in his eyes she could see conflict and… hate. But she wasn’t sure that hate was directed at her. 

 

She didn’t care. 

 

She spat on his face. It wasn’t quite as heavy and disgusting as she would have wanted but it was there. 

 

“You really shouldn’t have done that,” he gritted and wiped the spit from his face. 

 

“ _ CRUCIO _ !” Bellatrix’s gnarled voice cast at her and Draco released her curls as she fell to the ground, her body on fire with pain and unimaginable heat. Her mind was clear, undiluted from the pain, completely aware of each pull of muscle and bone. She was alert. She could feel her bones that felt like snapping and the flames in her muscles, as if they were melting her skin like cheap plastic near a warm stove. 

 

Eventually, it ended. 

 

She couldn’t move, her muscles unusable and her will to try vanishing. If she was going to be taken as a prisoner of war in Voldemort’s camp… well, let her die here. Under a canopy of greenery on the hallowed grounds of Hogwarts. 

 

She wasn’t that lucky. 

 

Draco’s hands found her hair again. The same fingers that had been run through her curls time and time again, as he had kissed her lovingly and frantically and all the ways she had ever dreamed of being kissed. 

 

She should have known. She should have been smarter. 

 

This time his hands weren’t exploring they were yanking. Yanking her to her useless feet, the weight pulling on her scalp. 

 

“I hate you,” she cried, nose to nose with him, tears falling down her cheeks. 

 

His eyes searched hers and he breathed deeply, “I know.” 

 

“Let’s go! The wards are down for only a while longer,” the scratchy voice called and in a swirl of smoke and magic, he Disapparated. 

 

There were pillars of magic disappearing into the sky as one by one they all left the grounds. All but Draco and Hermione… and Bellatrix. 

 

“I’ll take her Drakie…” 

 

Bellatrix’s gnarled hand reached for her and Draco tucked Hermione into her side.

 

Hermione’s eyes darted towards Bellatrix’s voice and saw her wand hand twitching to cast another Unforgivable. Her untrusting glare staring at the pair of them. 

 

“No,” Draco said firmly, “She’s mine to offer. I haven’t spent the last two months tricking the stupid little Mudblood to let anyone else bring her in,” he snarled. 

 

Hermione felt that in a place she didn’t know he could touch. After all the late night snogging and sometimes even, coexisting, she hadn’t expected that he had been doing it all for Voldemort. 

 

She felt anger but not at him. No, her anger was directed solely at herself… at what she allowed to enter into her safe space. This was her fault. 

 

“Too right,” Bellatrix nodded, her eyes tight.

 

Hermione let out a cry, as their bodies spiraled through the air. 

 

No one should be forced into Apparition so soon after suffering a Crucio. She was sure she was splinching, bits and pieces being littered over the continent to be found later by unsuspecting Muggles. 

 

They landed and she fell to her knees, emptying the contents of her Halloween Feast on the ground before her. Heaving the cold air greedily… there was no pain. She was in one piece. 

 

“Well, I hope you’re fucking happy,” Draco said lamely. 

 

Her eyes drifted up, expecting to see the ominous outline of Malfoy Manor and it’s foreboding gates. 

 

But it wasn’t. 

 

It was another forest, an unfamiliar one. 

 

“Where are we?” Her voice shaking with the remnants of the pain. 

 

“We,” he started and then laughed, “Are fucked. That’s all you really need to know. You couldn’t have just fucking Apparated? Couldn’t hide somewhere other than a fucking tree in the open? I should have never…” he ran his hands through his hair and groaned, “I was supposed to just hand you over. To walk back into that school and forget about your meager existence,” he laughed darkly, “What in the fuck is wrong with me? What is wrong with you?! Why would you ever follow me out there? With your stupid giant eyes staring at me, expecting me to fucking save you or something!”

 

His back was to her, hands shoved in his pockets. 

 

“Draco… where are we?” she repeated, finding the strength to rise to her feet. She turned slowly… she could see the stars and the moon. The ground was hilly and the trees were a completely different type. 

 

She thought she heard a small chuckle. 

 

“Happy Halloween, Granger. We are officially on the run.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my wonderful Betas: SweetLilBullet and In Dreams!


End file.
